“Water, Environment and Aesthetics in California”
Friday, April 2, 12:00 PM
Join us
https://csuchico.zoom.us/j/84999636804?pwd=aU5IVVM1TkNmZGF4Y0o1eDJSbVZKQT09
Meeting ID: 849 9963 6804
Passcode: 656373
Rina Faletti will talk about her book in progress, Aesthetics of Water: Faces of U.S. Urban Modernism. She will share how the visual appearance of hydraulic infrastructure, from art deco dams to mission-revival hydropower substations and Roman-style water temples, has played a central role in modernizing every major city in the nation. While it is indisputable that water powers urban prosperity, Faletti focuses on the water imagery that powers the cultural values underlying and promoting that prosperity. From the late 18thcentury, waterworks buildings were as much a foundation of U.S. urban history as banks, churches, capital buildings, and universities. The San Francisco Bay Area region was the first in the West to build engineered water systems on a monumental scale, and these built upon earlier traditions of water imagery, meant to glorify water and the technologies that moved it, true to the present day.
Rina C. Faletti, Ph.D. is a historian of art and architecture and an environmental humanist who writes about water, art and the city. At Chico State, Rina is an Instructor in Art, Art History and Architecture, and is Special Projects Coordinator for the Jacki Headley University Art Gallery. She has published about water in ancient Rome, pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, New Orleans, and California. She is co-editor and chapter author of Hydrohumanities: Water Discourse and Environmental Futures (UC Press, 2022).
